This week: 26th. October

Weather Report Week Ending 26/10/07

Maximum Temperature for the week 36.0C (97F) on Sun. 5 readings above our monthly average of 20.5C.

Minimum Temperature for the week 6.1C (43F) on Fri. 5 readings above our monthly average of 8.0C.

Rainfall for the Week 6.6mm (19 points) 2 days of rain.

Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Some rain for us this week, but not really enough to be useful. Two very hot days, with hot Northerly winds for us this week, these will have caused the vines to start using up our available moisture. We will need to start monitoring our soil moisture's very closely from now on, to work out when to start watering our vines.

This week in the vineyard:

We are continuing to do our Summer pruning. As I reported last week we have been drilling for water, to replace an old bore that we used to use for irrigation. We have been successful in finding water - however the quality is (as we expected) fairly marginal for growing grape vines. We will go ahead and equip this bore with a pump and filtration equipment, but it will only be used as an emergency water supply, if we can not get enough out of the Barossa Infrastructure Limited scheme that has been supplying water for us from the Murray River. If we have to use this bore water for more than a couple of years, I would expect to see some problems with Sodic soils starting to re-emerge (our soils have improved considerably in the 5 or 6 years since we have had access to the BIL water). The photo shows our new bore being blown out at about 8000 gal./hour.

We have also started putting on our 2nd fungicide spray for the season as some of our Chardonnay are showing the first signs of flowering.

Nuffield Scolarship for Barossa Grapegrower

I have been awarded a Nuffield scholarship, one of the most prestigious farming honours that can be awarded to young farmers worldwide. The Scholarship is worth $A25,000 and it will involve me spend 4 months next year travelling the world studying something agriculture related, my chosen subject will be ‘regional branding and marketing to improve returns for producers’. I will be spending the first 6 weeks of my time away on what is called a global focus tour, this is a very intensive tour of all different forms of agriculture and agriculture related industries. On this leg of my tour I will be visiting The Philippines, China, Canada, USA, Ireland and France. The rest of my travel is still to be organized, however I would like to spend the majority of my time in Europe and North America with possibly some time in New Zealand and South Africa. So towards the middle of next year this blog will change a little from being about our vineyard to something of a blog on world agriculture, for a while at least. I am looking forward to the opportunity that this will give me. I will be having a very busy year, but I suspect I will be coming back something of a changed person. My scholarship is supported by Nufarm, and I thank them very much for the opportunity that it will give me.

This week: 19th. October

Weather Report Week Ending 19/10/07

Maximum Temperature for the week 30.5C (87F) on Thurs. 5 readings above our monthly average of 20.1C.

Minimum Temperature for the week 3.1C (38F) on Sun. 1 reading above our monthly average of 8.1C.

Rainfall for the Week 0.0mm (0 points) 0 days of rain.

Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Another quite warm and very dry week, 2 days of about 10C above our monthly average. We have had no rain recorded at all this week. Quite cool nights, all but one night below our monthly average, however, thankfully, we have had no frost.

This week in the vineyard:

We have started our summer pruning (breaking off water shoots that are growing around the trunk of the vine). This job will take my 2 workers quite a few weeks.

This week we have had a drilling rig turn up to put down a new water bore for us (we have been waiting for about 3 months, very busy people given the current water situation in South Australia). They have plugged up one of our old bores that was leaking sand and saline water into the underground aquifer. They are now ready to put down a new bore for us, this will happen early next week. We will be casing this bore in PVC to ensure that this bore will never corrode away like the last one did. The photo shows the rig set up ready to start drilling next week.

This week: 12th. October

Weather Report Week Ending 12/10/07

Maximum Temperature for the week 28.9C (84F) on Wed. 2 readings above our monthly average of 20.1C.

Minimum Temperature for the week 2.4C (36F) on Sat. 2 readings above our monthly average of 8.1C.

Rainfall for the Week 3.2mm (9 points) 2 day of rain.

Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Another quite warm and dry week here in the Barossa Valley. We are still needing a couple of large dumps of rain, whilst we have reasonable subsoil moisture levels it will not last long without more rainfall to top it up.

This week in the vineyard:

We have spent the last week on the river Murray, in a houseboat. My family and I had a terrific time and yes I can report there is still some water in the Murray (at least between Mannum and Swan Reach there is). So very little has happened in our Vineyard for the last week. My staff will be back from holiday this coming week and I will be back on deck as well, so there should be more to report next week. This weeks photo shows some of our Sauv. Blanc. and how much growth they have put on in the last few weeks while I have been away. The cover crop is now dead and so should not be sucking any moisture out of the soil, hopefully it is actually helping to retain moisture. It will also provide some shading and so reduce soil temperatures once we start getting some heat wave conditions (potentially not that far away now).

This week: 5th. October

Weather Report Week Ending 5/10/07

Maximum Temperature for the week 30.5C (87F) on Tue. 5 readings above our monthly average of 20.1C.

Minimum Temperature for the week 1.9C (35F) on Fri. 3 readings above our monthly average of 8.1C.

Rainfall for the Week 1.2mm (3 points) 1 day of rain.

Weather data thanks to BOM & Nuriootpa Viticulture Research Centre.

Two very cold nights this week (not quite cold enough for a frost). Warm days most week with very little rainfall, quite a typical spring pattern for us here in the Barossa valley.

This week in the vineyard:

I have now finished our first fungicide application for this growing season. I have been in Perth most of the week at the Nuffield farming conference. I was there to receive one of 16 scholarships which were awarded to myself along with 15 other young farmers from all over Australia. My scholarship is for a primary producer from South Australia and is being supported by Nufarm. I will write a little more in a future posting about Nuffield and my Scholarship. The photo this week shows all of the new Nuffield Scholars at the presentation dinner, after we had received our awards.